Well this is my first timeline. I know that my english isn't great but I hope the story is enjoyable nontheless. I am always ready to consider constructive criticism so if you have a problem with a POD/my wording/... just tell me about it and I might change it.
The Age of Butterflies:
The Presidential Election of 1928
President Coolidge’s announcement to not seek a full second term sent shockwaves through the Republican Party. The Republicans were widely credited with the booming economy of the 1920s and a race to win the Republican nomination quickly ensued to claim this legacy. Herbert Clark Hoover was initially seen as the front runner, but President Coolidge intervened behind scenes to prevent a Hoover candidacy. The motives for Coolidge’s intervention are a controversial topic among historians to this day. It is clear however that Coolidge was not fond of Hoover, privately calling him “Wonder Boy” and stating that “"for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice—all of it bad." A widely accepted theory is that Coolidge wanted to preserve his legacy and was convinced that Hoover was not up to the task. Initially Coolidge seemed to be reluctant to intervene against his popular Secretary of Commerce but doubts about his suitability as President ultimately outweighed his concern of splitting the party.
Coolidge’s intervention effectively prevented Hoover’s candidacy. Coolidge was immensely popular in the party and his verdict combined with the distrust of many party regulars crippled Hoover’s campaign from the start. Hoover was unable to win the few primaries that mattered and withdrew from the race before the convention. A draft-Coolidge movement failed just like attempts from party officials to convince Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon to run.
Frank Orren Lowden emerged as the front runner despite his unsuccessful 1920 campaign. This campaign was a dark stain on Lowden’s reputation because it was linked with wasteful spending of money to convince delegates.
At the Republican National Convention Lowden won the nomination on the first ballot against Charles Curtis.
Charles Curtis however eventually emerged as the vice-presidential nominee to even out the ticket. He was supposed to attract farmers worried about Lowden’s laissez-faire attitude towards the economy.
The Democrats nominated Al Smith who was able to win the candidacy because most democratic leaders decided not to run due to overwhelming popularity of the Republican party. Smith was the first catholic candidate to be nominated by a major party.
The Smith campaign was successfully able to link the Lowden campaign with corruption and bribery due to his 1920 campaign. Ultimately this had little impact because anti-Catholicism proved to be a far more decisive factor in the popular opinion. Many protestants were convinced that Smith would take orders from the Pope as President. This anti-Catholicism and the overwhelming popularity of the Republican party eventually resulted in a landslide.
Lowden won with 55.91% percent of the popular vote and 399 electoral votes.
General Knowledge: American Politics, 2017
The 1928 Election was a crucial moment in our national history. The roaring 20s were coming to an end and no one was suspecting that the illusion of prosperity could end. Upon closer inspection the roaring 20s were a time of inequality and unregulated markets. The seeds for the Great Depression were sown during the Republican dominance of the 1920s but cheap credits and rampant speculation helped maintaining the illusion that everyone could be rich. So, the election of another laissez-fair Republican was no surprise. In retrospect it is also no surprise that this President was unable to fight the Great Depression by applying the same methods that created it in the first place.
Now it is argued that the United States were spared from a Hoover Presidency but in the 30s his disastrous foreign policy couldn’t have unfolded. Hoover not winning the nomination essentially saved his political survival. No Republican President would have survived 1929.
The Interesting question is if Hoover would have been a better choice. Some argue that he showed some signs of being a “Big Government Republican” during his tenure as Secretary of Commerce under President Coolidge. I wouldn’t completely disagree, but I think his later behavior showed that he reverted to his conservative instincts in times of pressure. I am convinced that he would have enacted the same disastrous austerity measures that Lowden used to “fight” the crisis. Let’s not be fooled, Hoover was a conservative and I don’t think that he had any inclinations to fight the Crisis with large scale government interventions.
from: Decades of Depression: The American Nightmare (2007)
Frank Orren Lowden became the President just before the Nation had to endure a horrible crisis and is unfairly seen as one of the worst Presidents.
Lowden was a tragic figure. He lacked the charisma to convince the people that his policies were necessary to end the crisis and was increasingly sidelined during his term. Eventually he was beaten in a landslide and had to witness how the Democrats destroyed all the progress he had made. Even though Lowden predicted the Second Depression, caused by the increasingly interventionistic policies of his successor, he was never able to rehabilitate his image.
Now there are some that claim Hoover would have been a better choice to lead the Nation in this troubled time. Personally, I would disagree because he showed some interventionistic tendencies as Secretary of Commerce. He was without a doubt on of the greatest Secretaries of State but his track record on domestic issues is mediocre. He was invaluable in the 1940s but in 1928 he would have failed destroying his career in the process.
The sad truth is that the Republican party lacked a “Great Communicator” that would have been able to guide the Nation through the crisis.
from: Crumbling Empire: The History of the West in the 20th century (2010)
The Harzburg Front
In retrospective the Harzburg Front of 1931 was one of the major political events of the Weimar Republic. The radical anti-republican right had cooperated before trying to prevent the Young plan with a referendum and the Harzburg Front was supposed to be the next step of this cooperation. The assassination of Alfred Hugenberg changed this initial plan and allowed Hitler to assume the sole leadership of the extreme right.
The summit of the far right was held in Bad Harzburg due to security concerns. The rural location made Communist disturbances unlikely because the KPD was traditionally strong in big cities but lacked support in the countryside. SA and Stahlhelm organized a massive security presence despite the secure location. The NSDAP also had control over the police because it was a member of the governing coalition of the Free State of Brunswick.
Ironically this massive security presence was completely unable to deal with anything except groups of Communist hecklers. Given the location of Bad Harzburg a pretty useless feat.
The whole summit was completely unguarded against an enemy acting from within.
Helmuth Mylius a newspaper publisher willing to strike before Hitler was able to seize the state, which he viewed as inevitable given the disorganized state of the Left and the snobbish arrogance of the reactionary right. He used his money and extensive network of contacts to assemble a diverse group with the aim to kill Hitler.
From his former Rotfront contacts Mylius was able to win the support of Georg Elsner, an artistic carpenter who quickly developed a talent for building explosives. Elsner who worked as a supplier for the watch manufacturer who became bankrupt in early 1931 was out of a job and a somewhat convinced communist. So, it wasn’t too hard to convince him to work for the Mylius group. Despite the claims of revisionist historians who claim that Elsner was in it for the money his statements during his interrogation by the Police (and later the Gestapo) show, that he had a clear view of the National Socialists and was convinced that they would inevitably start another war.
Mylius also was able to recruit Ludwig Aßner. Aßner is a pretty complex and little researched subject because the Nazis were successful in destroying most sources about his life. Aßner was a National Socialist with strong anti-clerical views, a leftover from his period as a Communist during the early Weimar Republic. As a party member Aßner was able to place the bomb Elsner built on the compound easily. Aßner’s motives remain a mystery but a popular theory suggests that he received a high sum of money from Mylius. [1]
The bomb was supposed to kill Hitler and other leading NSDAP members but unfortunately Hitler left the parade early due to political feuds with the other right-wing leaders. The bomb exploded to late and Hitler had already left together with Joseph Goebbels. Instead the bomb killed and injured several other prominent right-wing figures. [2]
The most prominent victims were Alfred Hugenberg, Gregor Strasser and Hermann Göring.
Hugenberg was the leader of the DNVP and a prominent media tycoon controlling a huge media network. He was Hitler’s most serious contender for leadership of the anti-republican right despite being gravely weakened by the electoral weakness of the DNVP. His death allowed Hitler to unite the divided radical right.
Gregor Strasser was a prominent figure of the revolutionary “left” wing of the NSDAP. His organizational reforms strengthened the NSDAP. Some historians even argue that the NSDAP would have never enjoyed massive electoral success without Strasser’s reforms.
Herman Göring was a famous and highly decorated pilot from the Great War. He joined the NSDAP during the early 20s and was able to create valuable networks in the high society. His personal prestige and his close relationship to Hitler made him a strong figure in the byzantine maze of the NSDAP hierarchy.
Also, very important was the fact that Ernst Röhm was gravely wounded and was unable to continue leading the SA. With Strasser dead and Röhm injured the revolutionary wing of the NSDAP was leaderless and unable to influence the events that unfolded after the explosion.
Hitler and Goebbels immediately realized the potential of the situation. The reactionary right was leaderless and weakened without Hugenberg. The NSDAP had been weakened too but Hitler’s supreme position ensured that it was still capable of acting-unlike the DNVP.
On the next day Hitler quickly organized a meeting of the surviving participants. The situation had drastically changed and there was massive approval for his venture to unite the far right.
There was a lot of common ground between the leaderless and radicalized DNVP and the less revolutionary NSDAP now. August Wilhelm von Preußen the fourth son of the former Kaiser and a fanatical National Socialist suddenly became a critical figure. He was able to win over the monarchists in the DNVP despite the contrary efforts of his brother Eitel Friedrich who despised the National Socialists.
After tense negotiations a merger created the NSDVP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Volkspartei/ National Socialist People’s Party). The National Socialists clearly more influential and Hitler retained his supreme position as Führer, but he had to accept and accommodate a strong reactionary wing in his new party.
The proposed merger to merge the Stahlhelm and the SA met more resistance. The Stahlhelm had reactionary leanings but, as a veteran’s association, had a more diverse membership than the DNVP. This was hard to reconcile with the SA, an ultra-right wing revolutionary party militia.
Eventually both sides made strong concessions. The SA was dissolved, and the former members were incorporated into the SS or the newly formed NSTB (Nationalsozialistischer Trutzbund/ National Socialist Defense Union).
The Stahlhelm fractured along political lines. The more moderate and/or Jewish members joined the “wahrer Stahlhelm” led by Theodor Duesterberg who had jewish ancestors himself. Duesterberg would go on to be the center of the anti-Nazi right wing. The “wahrer Stahlhelm” consisted of about 15-20% of the former members. The rest joined the NSTB (and the NSDVP).
The leadership of the new NSTB was offered to Hans von Seeckt (the “father of the Reichswehr”) because he was seen as a neutral figure able to balance the different interests. Seeckt who had disliked Hitler initially, eventually accepted the leadership after witnessing the assassination attempt by the Mylius group. [3] The new NSTB was a mixture of Stahlhelm and SA. The typical brown uniforms of the SA were replaced with grey uniforms, while the Swastika armband remained in place. Strategically Seeckt formed the undisciplined party militia into a paramilitary force that closely resembled the Reichswehr in terms of hierarchy and organization. The long-term goal was a quick integration into the Reichswehr after a hypothetical electoral success of the NSDVP. The NSTB was plagued by tensions because von Seeckt preferred former Stahlhelm members (about 70% of the NSTB officers were former Stahlhelm members) but the worst troublemakers either joined the rapidly expanding SS or were expelled from the party.
The new NSDVP entered the Presidential Elections of 1932 confident. The new party greatly benefited from the impression that the National Socialists now had ended their phase as “revolutionary street thugs”. This new image allowed the NSDVP to make great inroads into the electorate of the democratic parties.
from: Hitler and his Paladins (1996)
[1] This supposed to be a tribute to some people who tried to kill Hitler before the outbreak of WW2. If this seems to ASBish I could retcon this.
[2] This is in line with Hitler’s creepy luck of OTL. He survived a lot of assassination attempts by leaving early etc. ITTL he can talk about “Vorsehung” too. Also, he left early in OTL too. Sadly, ITTL the world is just as unlucky as IOTL.
[3] Von Seeckt was the architect of the Reichswehr and laid the ground work for the later success of the Wehrmacht. IOTL he stated that he and Hitler “had the same goal but disagreed about the means to reach it”. After experiencing the explosion of the Mylius bomb he might be more radical IOTL.